Indonesia's Grasp on Papua Questioned Amid Unrest

Written By Voice Of Baptist Papua on August 2, 2012 | 10:40 PM

A spate of shootings in Papua over the past month is fueling charges
that trigger-happy Indonesian soldiers are only exacerbating unrest and
pro-independence sentiment in the resource-rich region.

Indonesia
has maintained a strong military presence since it annexed the former
Dutch colony in 1969, despite granting it more autonomy in 2001. Some
estimates suggest that more than 14,000 troops patrol the restive
province.

“Special autonomy isn’t working because Jakarta has
failed to win the hearts of Papuans,” said Socratez Sofyan Yoman, a
Baptist minister and pro-independence activist.

“Their military and police treat us like animals. So we’re seeking better dialogue and an end to the intimidation,” he said.

Part
of the movement to escape Indonesia’s grasp is to claim more benefits
from a wealth of natural resources in Papua, which has attracted foreign
giants such as BP and US miner Freeport McMoRan.

Violence occurs
regularly at Freeport’s massive gold and copper mine, a symbol of the
Papuan struggle, with many claiming a spiritual attachment to nature and
resenting outsiders who they say strip the land bare of resources.

Since
a German tourist was shot and wounded on a Papuan beach on May 29 by
suspected separatists, seven civilians and a soldier have died in
shootings and other violence, according to the human rights group
Kontras.

Police have tended to blame the pro-independence Free
Papua Movement (OPM), which celebrated its 47th anniversary on Sunday.
It urged Papuans to raise its banned Morning Star flag for the occasion.

But
police now suspect that the National Committee for West Papua (KNPB), a
separatist youth group, is behind some of the violence.

KNPB
representatives, however, say the group is unarmed and accuse police of
trying to orchestrate violence to blacken the independence movement and
of covering up investigations into fatal shootings committed by its
officers.

They point to the shooting and killing of KNPB vice
chairman Mako Tabuni last month, an incident that led infuriated
pro-independence activists to demand a full explanation from the
national parliament.

“We came to Jakarta to ask the president for a new approach,” Septer Manufandu of the Papuan NGOs Cooperation Forum said.

“They say they want dialogue with us, but they continue their intimidation through their soldiers and police,” he said.

Police
claimed Tabuni was armed and resisted arrest before they shot him, but
activist groups quoted witnesses as saying he was shot by men in
plainclothes from a passing car.

Activists also claimed that
soldiers acted with impunity on June 6 when they opened fire on the town
of Wamena, shooting 17 people, killing one and torching 87 homes in
response to the murder of a soldier by someone in the community.

Police
said the soldier had been stabbed after he knocked down a child while
riding a motorcycle. But information is hard to verify because foreign
journalists are de facto barred from the region.

The Reverend
Benny Giay, a prominent activist, said Jakarta needed to ask why there
was such strong pro-independence sentiment in Papua, Indonesia’s
easternmost province, which occupies half of the island of New Guinea.

“It’s
because we are treated like animals, like nothing, on our own land. Our
sentiments didn’t just fall from the sky,” he said.

However,
Jakarta refuses to revisit the 1969 UN-backed “Act of Free Choice”
referendum that validated its claim to Papua. The referendum was widely
seen a sham, with Jakarta hand-picking 1,026 people to vote on behalf of
all Papuans.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Friday
that there would be “no discussion or dialogue about the separation of
Papua” and that Indonesia’s sovereignty over Papua was “legal and
final.”

The government has tried to engage local leaders in
dialogue to implement policies that suit both sides, but Papuans are
growing weary of the process, analyst Muridan Widjojo from the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences told AFP.

“It’s a little
contradictory — Jakarta wants to take a dialogue approach at the same
time it takes a militaristic approach, so it has lost the trust of the
people,” he said.